Prequel
by Llama Lady Lily
Summary: Prequel to season two, starting in Journey. Puck centric. "They're a family, even if only for a little while."


**It starts during Journey, and goes right up until I think school is a few weeks in, where season two might pick up.**

**There might be a sequel. I know what happens in my head, but I'm not quite done writing it yet. But I wanted to get this out and in the world before season two comes out (in Australia, I don't know about anywhere else) so I couldn't change it.**

**Puck and Quinn are my drug of choice.**

**It's a lot longer than I thought it would be.**

**Nothing is mine.**

It wasn't for very long. It was perhaps a couple of hours. But for a little while, they were a family. Quinn was screaming, and all he could do was stand and catch her eye to let her know he was still there for her. Still there, as a part of the family he desperately wanted to hold onto – and then she was there. She was tiny, and perfect, and the nurse saw tears in his eyes and handed him a pair of scissors, because that's 'dad's' job. He doesn't get to hold her first, of course. She gets to. But he doesn't begrudge her that. Nine months of carrying her around, she gets first dibs. Plus labour looked and sounded like a bitch, so he figured she got to see the fruits of it first.

So someone puts the baby in her arms, and a tear leaks down his cheek. It's followed by a fair few more. Quinn reaches out her hand, and Mercedes holds it, but she shakes it off. He's not even looking at her, and she's not looking at him, and it's because they're both staring with incredulous eyes at their tiny piece of heaven, but he knows it's his hand she wants. He moves to her side and takes it, and his little girl's little eyes looks straight at him, and he feels something he didn't know he'd been searching for his whole life.

They're a family, even if only for a little while.

He gets her next, and cries some more, and doesn't give a crap about being badass, because he's a father, damnit. He's crying, and holding a little girl in a pink blanket, and once or twice he coos at her, and he'd like to see Karovsky or any of those other badass imitators do anything else when they hold their kid for the first, and he dreaded to think maybe the last time. So he held her with every muscle in he had, and every morsel of strength going into not crushing her – because, face it, she's tiny, and she's so perfect she might not even be real, so if you hold her too hard, she might disappear.

She's passed around after that. Grandmothers, of course, and the aunties and uncles she'd never know, the Godmother and Godfather (Mercedes and Finn) who would never know they were first picks every time to take care of their tiny miracle if anything were to happen to them. But it wouldn't matter to her if anything happened to them. They'd just be gone. So they never told the ones who'd taken on roles above and beyond the call of duty for the child they'd never know. New Directions loved her from the first moment they saw her, and he would swear he saw Mr. Schuester shed a tear. But to be fair, how could he not? His kid was amazing. She was perfect. He might have been offended if he didn't cry.

Then they were all gone. It was just him, and Quinn, and Beth. She scooted to one side of the bed, and tapped the other side with the hand not holding their daughter. He laid down beside her, and their little girl stretched over them, blissfully asleep, unaware that both of her parents were again crying. But these were different tears. Quinn had cried giving birth, and they bad both cried when she was finally there, in their arms, but now the tears were taking the form of a terrible melancholy sadness. They were a family, lying together for the first time. They were crying because they both knew it would be the last time. Puck held Quinn with one arm, gently touched their little girl with the other, and neither of them tried to slow their tears. Eventually, Quinn fell asleep in his warm embrace, too, and he was the only one in their tiny, dysfunctional family still awake, so he, too, closed his eyes with that wrenching, sickening feeling of having one's family ripped away inch by inch.

Someone snapped a photo or two of the sleeping temporary family – he thinks it might have been Finn, but no one has ever mentioned it, and these days he can't talk about it without his heart wrenching again, so he never asks for it, even though he wants more than almost anything to just have that one photo – proof that they mattered, proof that they still cared, that she existed. He just wants the one, so that he can put it in a drawer somewhere and pull it out every now and then, any time he needs reminding.

...

They have her put into the hospital nursery after that, and they stand in front of it just staring at her, and Puck is praying to any kind of God that is listening that she'll just change her mind. He knows they could make it work somehow. But he honestly had no idea how he was going to walk away from her. He didn't know how anything could be so amazing. She was half Quinn, and she was half him. Somehow, the proportions had gotten mixed up in there, because she was so divinely celestial, so magically angelic that she was clearly more her mother than she was him.

"She looks like you..." he said softly when he realised that he was right – proportions were off, and she was so like Quinn. "Do you want to keep her?"

And there was hardly a pause before she busted out with: "No." It wasn't at all like her to have such decisive answers to such important questions. He supposed she'd had to convince herself of what she really wanted. Convince herself that it was best. "Do you?"

He said nothing. They remained in silence, because he didn't know any way to tell her that he wanted that little girl in there with all of his heart without breaking her own into tiny pieces.

"Did you love me?"

Finally an easy question to answer. "Yes. Especially now." She had brought Beth into the world. How could he not love her? But the second the words were out of his mouth they felt like a dirty trick. They felt like a bribe. He sounded as though he'd set her up to tell her he loved her so she'd keep Beth, and that wasn't his intention at all. He just wanted to let her know how much she meant to him. Which was a Goddamn lot. He knew a lot about love, contrary to popular belief – he knew even more now he was a father (and he was fairly sure would never get used to that word once they let her go) and he knew that the connection they had was more than just a baby. It was more than nine months of morning sickness, cravings and a small life building inside her. What he felt for her was real.

He looked up and looked over, and was glad to see she hadn't been too horridly hurt by the words that had come out wrong, and just smiled, because she could always make him happy any time of day. And the tiny creature that was (in theory) half him was a spitting image of her, so he just smiled.

...

He couldn't be there when she gave Beth to Shelby. He was pretty sure she saw it from his side of the fence, because he could see it very well from her side. He knew she needed to do the last minute checks – the final pep talk, and she needed to wave good bye to Shelby, and make her promise to raise her daughter to ice skate and sing and be amazing. He could see that was what she needed, but he just couldn't. He couldn't just stand there and watch as someone else drove away with his daughter. He'd invested too much time into that little girl – too much emotion, too much effort to hand her off to someone else to raise. He respected that Quinn didn't want to do that – to an extent, he even understood it, but those last few words, that final good bye... he couldn't do that in front of her. Not in front of Shelby. And he felt like it was going to be too rough to do in front of Quinn, as well – more emotional blackmail. So he waited until she had gone to sleep again – she was still sleeping almost as much as Beth – and he took his guitar to the nursery, and he sang to the little girl who had changed his life forever, that he would never know. He had an hour and a half or so with his daughter, in which he tried to cram a lifetime's worth of father's wisdom – Shelby didn't have a husband, so his little girl may never know a father. That was one of the things that hurt him the most. If the baby had gone to the Schuesters, his kid wouldn't have grown up without a dad. He knew what that was. He'd promised himself a long time ago he'd never abandon his own kids like his father had done to him.

But this was different, he told her. He loved her too much. He loved her so much he wanted to keep her safe from everything. He wanted to lock her away in her bedroom so she'd be safe from disease and corruption and _boys like him_, but that would be irresponsible. Beth was being offered a life here. A great life. Better than two teenagers could ever hope to give her. Anything he and Quinn could offer would be substandard, and she was so magnificent, he looked into her eyes and knew she deserved the best. Shelby could give her more than they could. He apologised, too. He told Beth not to blame her mother, because she'd spent a long time deliberating it – what degree of selfishness she could get away with. She had asked herself countless times what she would sacrifice for the love of her child. And when she was there in her arms, it became clear what she would sacrifice for Beth's happiness.

Everything. Anything. Even her own. And Shelby was offering something far beyond what they could give her. But they loved her very much.

So he sang some more to the little girl who would never know him.

"... _Someday I'll wish upon a star  
And wake up where the clouds are far  
Behind me.  
Where troubles melt like lemon drops_

_High above the chimney tops  
That's where you'll find me._

_Somewhere over the rainbow  
Bluebirds fly-_"

"You sound good, Puck," Mr. Schuester said from the door to the nursery.

Puck wiped the tears he'd almost forgotten he was shedding. Quinn was with him, too. "Thanks," he said. But Quinn disappeared. She'd just been showing their teacher where Puck was, and leaving them.

"How are you feeling," Mr. Schuester asked, standing next to him, looking into the glass basinet where Beth was laying.

"Shelby's coming soon. We've umm... we've signed all the forms and everything. But she's still ours until Shelby signs them."

"She'll always be a bit yours, Puck," Mr. Schuester said sadly, with a hand on Puck's shoulder.

He dropped his guitar and pulled the older man into a hug.

...

He was watching. This was it. This could be the last time he saw his little girl, and he was seeing her through the glass doors of the hospital. Quinn was trying not to cry as she said her own goodbyes to their daughter. He watched as she started to whisper in the little girl's ear, and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, and passed her away for the last time. Shelby didn't linger for long. She'd said everything she needed to say, so very soon, she left, taking Beth with her. Quinn rushed out of the wide doors of the hospital to see the last glimpse of her little girl in the backseat of a black range rover. Puck raced with her. He'd never forgive himself if he didn't see this. So he stood with Quinn and held her hand as Shelby drove past, taking with her their perfect little girl.

Once the range rover was out of sight, Quinn turned on her heel, and sped back into the hospital. Puck followed her slowly, and when he found her, she had her bags on the bed, and she was packing them.

"What are you doing?" there was no answer. She merely threw her belongings into her bags. Once packed, she gathered them and made to move past him. He blocked her path.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Away," she said, not meeting his eyes. "Excuse me." She made to leave again. He still stood in the doorway.

"You can't go anywhere, Quinn," he said softly. "They haven't discharged you yet. You're still in your gown." Apparently unaware that she was only wearing underwear, Quinn ripped off her hospital gown, threw it to the ground and made to push past him again.

"Puck, let me past," she said.

"Quinn, you've got to stay," he said.

"Move, Puck," she said angrily, stepping towards him.

"I can't do that." he said even softer than before.

"_Move, Puck_," she demanded, almost stepping on him now.

"No," he said.

"Just move!" she shouted, striking him in the chest. "Move! Let me go!" and she hit him some more. He could see tears spring to her eyes, and she continued to hit him, but she'd lost momentum, and her energy was going into her tears, and trying to stop them. He wrapped his arms around her out of instinct, and her pitiful taps on his chest continued.

"Please just let me go," she whispered through her tears, but he knows it isn't what she wants. Soon, she stopped trying to run, and pressed her face into his chest, taking handfuls of his shirt in her angry fists, and cried. When he knew she would allow it, he pulled her into his arms in a style he'd once heard referred to as 'bridal', and cursed the term. He carried her over to the bed and sat, with her still cradled carefully in his arms, tears free falling. When he breathed, he could still smell Beth in her hair. His heart wrenched for the little girl, so he held her mother as tightly as he could, and there they sat.

His mother found them some time later, standing in the same position. Quinn's tears had quelled, but Puck had still not opened his eyes, and the wrenching would not end. She bade them quietly into the backseat of the car, and took his little sister back into the hospital to collect Quinn's things from her room, and sign her discharge papers. Whether she was unwilling or unable to move, Quinn remained perfectly still, so Puck just carried her back through the hallway, the elevator, the foyer and the carpark without a word. He deposited her into her seat, and even did up her seatbelt, fearing she was too comatose, and then took the seat on the other side of the car, and took her hand in his. There was just silence and sadness for a short time.

"Can I come with you?" Quinn asked quietly, still holding his hand.

He just nodded, and stroked her hand with his thumb. The silence resumed. His fear of her being unconscious was quelled, but the sadness only seemed to layer thicker.

They didn't talk at all that night.

They didn't talk. They didn't sleep. They didn't eat. They just went upstairs to Puck's room, and laid on his bed. He had his arms around her, and she had her head in his chest. At some point, she entwined their legs. Her tears continued to fall, and at some point in the night, Puck had the strangest thought – his shirt would probably always be salt stained. The thought only makes him hold her closer.

...

She comes over a lot. More than a lot. School's over for now. It's the summer, and during the day they sit in the sun room and listen to each other breathe. Sometimes his sister gets bored, and comes in. She tries to entice Quinn to talk again. She sits on Puck's lap, just like old times, and he rubs her arms with his calloused, gentle fingers, and Quinn looks longingly at the family bonding she never had with her sister, and paints the younger girl's toenails, often without a word. His little sister loves him so much, she's often the only one who can make him eat.

Quinn eats, though. She misses his mom's cooking. Warm, hearty soups, homemade bread, thick pasta sauce. She thinks her food tastes like family, and sometimes, she helps, trying to learn how to cook like Mrs. Puckerman. Now there was no baby, now Quinn was helping her son cope with that loss, and now she helped with the cooking, much of Mrs. Puckerman's frostiness seemed to melt.

Puck doesn't like to eat much, though. He pushes his lasagne around his plate, blows on spoonfuls of soup until it's stone cold. His sister moves her chair to sit right next to him, and she puts her head on his arm, and whispers 'please' until he forces food down his throat.

His tiny twelve year old sister bakes cookies and muffins and brownies that look like crap but taste great. She pushes them into his hands, and her innocent smile makes him bite into the blueberry goodness without tasting it. He knows she's frightened. He knows he's withering away. She keeps telling him if he looks this crap when school goes back in, the coach won't put him back on the football team. For the first time in weeks, a small smile crosses his lips.

...

She cries most nights. She doesn't stay with her mom yet. That's still too hard. She goes back every few days for clothing and to see her. Puck goes right along with her, with a casual hand draped over the back of her chair. They pretend he's just driving her, just carrying her bag down the stairs, but she knows he's afraid she won't come back, and he knows she doesn't really like to go too long without seeing him.

So she sleeps in his bed, under his covers, tight in his embrace. And before she drifts off, she cries. Sometimes there's sound, but mostly, there's not. Mostly there are a couple of tears on his pillow, and a gentle hand rubbing her back, and that's all the support or comfort he knows how to offer, because, face it, the only way he really knows how to be close to a woman is sex. So he gives her what little he can.

...

They don't really talk about it much. It's not like there's a whole lot to say, anyway. If you ask him, he'll tell you that they said everything that needs to be said, and everything else you can find in a song. So he sits a while, and plays his guitar, and sometimes she sings, but they never really talk about it. Sometimes they talk about whatever happens to be on tv, sometimes they talk about his sister, sometimes they talk about twinkees. Hell, sometimes they talk about what they think happens when you die, and about the issues she's still having with her parents. When they can manage to spit out the words, sometimes they talk about something that's actually important, but they never really talk about _her_.

...

Quinn has nightmares.

After she cries some nights, she kicks and punches and writhes around in his bed. She screams into the night, and the Puckerman women have long since stopped rushing in to see who is being murdered. So he wakes up to a swift kick in the shins and immediately tightens the grip she's fallen asleep in. Once, he sang to her as she writhed, and it only served to make her scream louder, so he stops at once, and just holds her, copping her (admittedly fairly weak) blows, and after a while, it passes.

It's not every night, mind you. But some nights.

...

She holds her hands over her stomach.

She'd started doing it when she was pregnant – some kind of protection thing, he guessed – but she keeps doing it even after she's had Beth. He doesn't really know why. But she laces her fingers, and goes to lay them over her stomach, and with the shock of realisation similar to when you forget there's another stair and your foot falls through the air, her hands fall to where her stomach now is, as opposed to where it had been a few weeks ago when she _had_ been pregnant.

He sees her heart break a little every time.

...

One night, he finds she's missing from his arms. He looks up in silence to see her staring out of his window, hands poised, talking to God.

"... know we did the right thing. I've figured it out. She's Shelby Corcoran – if anyone can make our daughter a star, it's her. Between Puck and I, she'll have a voice, and with Shelby as a coach, she'll be incredible. I know now why we had her: we're going to see her name in lights one day. That's why, isn't it? Please, Lord, watch over our little girl. Please."

He rose in her prayer and put his arms around her small frame.

"Amen," he whispered.

"Amen," she echoed, and dropped her hands to wrap around his arms, returning his hug. They're still not smiling – his sister only made him smile once, and Quinn not at all since the range rover pulled away – but they enjoy the comfort.

...

"I'm sorry," she finally whispers into the abyss of the night. He shakes his head, his hair scratching on the pillow. He knows what she's talking about.

"Don't be," he said. Their legs are entwined again, and they're both pretending to sleep.

"No, I am," she said, and he could feel this was what she'd come to say. This was what it had taken her five weeks to work up to saying. "I'm sorry."

"Quinn..." he tries to abate her.

"I'm sorry," and he can hear the lump in her throat. "I didn't think it would be this hard. I didn't know it would be this bad."

"Quinn, you said it yourself. We're just kids."

"We're her parents, Puck," she says, and he feels the hot tears on his arm. "She belongs with us!"

And he has no words for this, because he believed it right from the start.

"You were right," she says, and it tears him apart. "I'm sorry. You were right the whole time. I should have listened to you." With that she dissolves in further tears, whispering 'I'm sorry' over and over into his chest.

He's afraid to say anything, because he's really bad at this, but it's why she's here, so he gives it his best, hoping he doesn't completely screw it up.

"It hurts," he said softly, trying to calm her. "I know it hurts. But it only hurts us." At this, she seemed to take a good, solid breath. "We didn't do this for us. We didn't do it because we're teenagers and were too afraid. We did this for her. We did this because we believed she deserved better than what we could give her. We did this to give her a life we might not ever be able to provide for her." He continued to rub her back. "We did this because it may always hurt us, but she never needs to know it."

"I just want it to stop," she whispered.

"The fact that it hurts just proves you're human. It proves you care. I don't know if it'll ever stop completely. I... I doubt it, really. But I think... with time... we'll get better at managing it. I think it'll get easier to handle."

"I'm still sorry," she said. "I'm sorry you're hurting."

"It's okay," he said. "Or... it will be."

...

She starts spending more time at her own house once school starts up again. He drives her home every afternoon, and she does her homework and talks to her mom. Sometimes she stays for dinner. Sometimes she calls him after dessert and asks him not to come pick her up. When she's had a good day, when her mom has been easy to handle, she stays the night. It takes a couple of months, but soon, she has enough on her plate – school work, SAT prep, cheerios, glee – to distract her from the horrible nights, and she's back living (almost) permanently with her mom. They spend Saturdays together, though. On Sundays, he goes back to working at Sheets 'n' Things, and she does more school work. But some afternoons, when there's no football (there's a new coach, who _does _let him back on the team, mostly on reputation he guesses, but he starts eating again anyway) or cheerios or glee. Mostly, they stay at his house, because her mom tries, but she still makes it pretty clear she doesn't like him, and going anywhere else just makes it feel more like a date. So their time spent together is mostly back in his sunroom, or out the back on his sister's old swing set.

They sit together at lunch, too. It's not saying much, because it's a big table with about twenty people sitting at it. Between the five or six football players, half dozen cheerios (including Kurt), and a fair few of the Glee club, they're not a table that would have been seen dead together twelve months previously. It's, admittedly, strange to see the big quarterback in his letterman jacket with his arm around tiny Rachel in her consistently strange ensemble of clothing. Kurt tends to run seminars during lunch, also. He starts with healthy eating, so as to ween nervous cheerios off coach Sylvester's shakes, and moves onto skin care, and later, onto math (because the cheerios pick up pretty quickly on night time skin rituals but struggle with algebra). They sit in the centre of the room. Finn barged big Karvosky off the table some weeks ago to make room for his girlfriend, while Puck only had to clear his throat to have Azimo practically throw himself from his seat, and from then on, it takes only one raised eyebrow to quell their protests, or comments about glee being gay. Order has sort of been restored – the quarterback and his wide receiver are at the top (not that they talk much anymore. Finn is still a little sore at Puck), with the captain of the cheerios sitting at the main table again. Underneath them on the social pecking order, however, has been completely rearranged. Karovsky and Azimo, previously quite close to the top, have been pushed all the way to the outskirts of the cafeteria, with Finn and Puck's unspoken message being spoken loud and clear.

Somehow, life slips into some new kind of normal. They're back at the top (face it, they belong there), and they unconsciously sit next to each other at lunch every day (but she still has to remind him to eat sometimes), they get back into the routine of class work (Puck goes to math almost all the time now) and they try to start their lives again without her.

...

They're both different. They've both changed.

They're not a couple. They sleep in the same bed a fair bit, but it's not romantic. They don't hold hands, they don't write sappy love notes, they don't kiss, and they definitely don't make love, but they spend most of their free time together. Occasionally, when he's unexpectedly nice, she'll place a sweet, lingering kiss on his cheek, but it's as close as they come. They walk places together, he drives her to and from school every morning, they sit together at lunch, but they're not a couple. They simply share something that will forever haunt their hearts.

She's got stretch marks now. She puts lotion on them every morning and every night, but they're not going away. She's lost almost all of her baby weight – it didn't take very long when she was only eating one meal a day for a while, and now she's back eating properly, but on a regular exercise regime, it's staying off. She doesn't really have her heart in that sort of thing anymore, though. She's captain of the cheerios again, but she doesn't live for it like she used to. She still sings in glee, and sometimes Mr. Schuester gives her a solo if he thinks she can handle it – that is, if there's not too much emotion needed. And don't get her wrong, she still really likes to sing, and she's still pretty good, but she doesn't get as angry when Rachel gets all the solos, or Santana misses her high note. The nightmares don't come nearly as often anymore, and they're not as drastic. She still cries a bit when no one can see her. She knows that'll take some time, but she's pretty okay with it. It still hurts. She guesses it always will.

He, on the other hand, has changed pretty drastically. She's lost a lot of her life, and her love for things, but other than that is pretty much the same. But he wears his heart pretty plainly on his sleeve. He's become a man. He's stopped throwing kids in dumpsters (but there's still very much the threat, so he still inspires some fear), and he's stopped sleeping around. Hell, he's stopped flirting. It's the longest he's gone without sex since he lost it at thirteen, but it's not really on his radar anymore. He goes to almost every class, and even starts pulling up (most of) his grades. He's become the man that the daughter he'll never know would be proud of.

...

They know they'll never be past it. It'll always be with them.

They're going to love that little girl the rest of their lives.


End file.
